LoRaMaDoR - ham radio based on LoRa

LoRaMaDoR is a communication system based on LoRa digital radio. The name is a wordplay with "LoRa" and "radioamador" (ham radio in Portuguese). The most obvious use case is live chat, but there's potential for many other uses.

This project is inspired by LoRaHam. The major enhancement is a packet format which is more powerful and more extensible, allowing for true network formation.

LoRaMaDoR is a priori targeted for amateur radio operators. The callsign is the network address. But anyone can try it, actually. And they can even do it legally, since LoRa operates on unlicensed ISM bands.

Quick demo

In this video, LoRaMaDoR is running in 3 or 4 Arduinos, and we are interacting with one of them via USB serial port. We send "human" messages, and also ping a remote station to get an automatic response.

The idea of the command-line interface is to make the operation as simple as possible. To send a typical message, just type "callsign message"; the controller fills in the red tape to produce the final, valid packet.

LoRaMaDoR works without anything connected to the serial port. It responds to PINGs and can forward packets. It can be extended to be an autonomous weather sensor, location beacon, etc. # Building the project This project needs some Arduino libraries that are straightforward to obtain (LoRa, OLED display, etc.). FWIW they are included in a ZIP file (tooling/loralibs.zip). We also depend on LoRaL2 project (https://github.com/elvis-epx/LoRaL2). This library is included via symlinks, and it is expected that LoRaL2 project folder exists at the same level as LoRaMaDoR. # Console and command-line interface (CLI) Use the terminal software of your choice (screen, minicom, etc.) to connect to Arduino serial port. Set the speed to 115200bps and disable RTS/CTS handshaking if necessary. Alternatively, you can operate the console wirelessly using any Telnet client e.g. PuTTY. Just fill in your Wi-Fi configuration (details further down this document). Users can play with the protocol with (seemingly) bare hands. The implementation fills in the red tape to generate a valid packet. For example, a user types: ``` QC Chat tonight 22:00 at repeater 147.000 ``` "QC" is the pseudo-destination for broadcast messages. The actual transmitted packet (minus the FEC suffix) is something like ``` QCPP5ABC>PU5XYZ|PP5CRE-11>PU5ABC ``` ## The protocol See the [Packet format page](PacketFormat.md) for technical details about the wire protocol. There is a [TNC mode](TNC.md) for interaction between a computer and the microcontroller. See the possible [non-amateur uses](NonAmateur.md) of this stack, and the [tentative roadmap](Roadmap.md) of the project. ## Console via Telnet The console can be operated via Telnet. This is more convenient when the Arduino is far away, perhaps positioned in a good antenna spot. This is possible because ESP32 TTGO has built-in support for Wi-Fi and TCP/IP. You just need to enter your network details in LoRaMaDoR via serial console, using the commands !ssid and !password. Then !reset and check the console messages to confirm the network configuration is ok. Use the !wifi command to get the detailed connection status. The IP address is shown upon connection on console, and can be queried via !wifi command. Generally you won't need to find out the IP, since LoRaMaDoR also supports Bonjour (mDNS). For example, if the station callsign is ABCDEF-1, the network name will be ABCDEF-1.local or abcdef-1.local (network names are case-insensitive). While a Telnet client is connected, the serial console is silenced (save for Wi-Fi disconnection messages) and does not accept input. Once the Telnet connection is closed, the serial console is reenabled.